Much of Braintree without power on Easter Sunday

Equipment failure cause of outage

Many Braintree residents were left in the dark Sunday afternoon when an electrical equipment failure caused a power outage impacting more than half the town.

Officials from the city’s Electric Light Department told the Patriot Ledger that the outage occurred at 1:40 p.m., impacting two-thirds of Braintree. Residents in West Braintree were not affected.

“On Easter, it couldn’t happen at a worse time,” said Bill Bottiggi, general manager of the city’s electric provider.

Many businesses, including those along Granite St. near South Shore Plaza, were forced to close during the power outage. Traffic lights on Granite Street were off, causing traffic slowdowns on the busy roadway.

Bottiggi said the failure was caused by a failure of a lightening arrester, a piece of equipment on the transmission system.

“We took it out of service temporarily and have crews working on it now,” said Bottiggi.“If things go well, power will be back on (by 3 p.m.).”

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